


Sisters, Sons, and Other Prisoners

by Gay_as_fuck



Series: our past is a prison, our future uncertain [1]
Category: Mugen no Juunin | Blade of the Immortal
Genre: Anxiety, Canonical Character Death, Drabble, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, Loss of Parent(s), Minor Character Death, One Shot, Pre-Canon, Self-Discovery, Self-Hatred, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Vomiting, that tag only applies to rin's interalized transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 01:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16672381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gay_as_fuck/pseuds/Gay_as_fuck
Summary: A day after the death of his sister Manji finds it far too easy to leave the past behind. A year after the death of her parents Rin finds a way to change.(Or, two snapshots of Manji and Rin being trans and how that relates to who they are.)





	Sisters, Sons, and Other Prisoners

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something a little longer but i just have a lot of trans manji and rin feels so bleh here's this.

The night after Machi dies Manji decides two things, that he's going to leave this place and he's going to cut off his breasts. He does the second thing that night with one of his swords, it hurts like a bitch and is a rather messy procedure which involves cutting out the muscle around the skin and then holding the flaps of skin in place while his worms heal him up. They do, of course, the reliable little fuckers, and he looks almost like he was born flat chested. He's been wearing traditional men's clothing for years now since it so damn comfortable. It's easier to fight in a yukata than a kimono, he learned that the hard way. He can't grow stubble, which wouldn't be a problem if he pretended to be the kind of man who shaved on the regular. The problem with that was how everything else about him contradicted that idea, but he could pass for an eccentric who shaved his face and nothing else. Years of pipe smoking had given his voice a hint of a growl but most important to how much he looks like a man is the muscle. A life of swordsmanship is what gives him an edge up, no one could look at his well-toned muscles and call him a woman.

It's the leaving that takes longer because he has to bury his little sister. He brought the body back with him and let the blood soak through the white of his yukata while refusing to look down and see the organs of his little sister falling out. It takes him a day to work up the will to bury her, he takes a shovel and finds a hill with flowers on it. It's the kind of place she would have found beautiful and tried to get him to play fairy princess or something similar.

He thinks about why she was like that, what he had done to her, and almost sinks the blade of the shovel into his foot rather than the ground. He finds his composer quickly and sets to the task, uprooting flours and crushing others with piles of dirt. When he has dug a hole suitable for a grave and deep enough for her body to never surface he drags her dead body in, lets it drop with a somewhat sickening thud. He then goes about covering her up as the day begins to come to a close. His stomach complains that he hasn't eaten for a few days and he does his best to ignore it.

When he finishes filling in the hole with a pat to the dirt he looks around to see the sunset. He's not the kind of man with an eye for beautiful, that was always Machi's talent, but he knows he's ruined the scenery. The flowers have been crushed, uprooted, or soaked with blood. She would have complained about it, tugged on his sleeve and pull him away from where he might crush petals. There's a memory of when they were children somewhere in the back of his mind, she's smiling and watching the sunset while half curled into his side. She turns to him and says- something. She had said something and he knows that if he could remember it he knows would have laughed at the irony of his situation, at how right his sister must have been. What she said had to have been important, but he can't recall her words for the life of him.

And it hits him for the first time, that he'll never hear her say anything again. He has a limited amount of her, a finite number of words he'll end up forgetting like the sunset-tinged memory he's struggling with now. He stands there and stares at the sun as it sinks below the earth and is forced to think, "what's next"? and truly consider it for the first time.

Up until this point, he’s not allowed himself to think selfishly. He’s been alive for his little sister but he hadn’t been happy because it’s painful to be around her and worse to be on his own knowing that she needed him. There had been moments where she had smiled at him and the look in her eyes almost convinced him they were fine, that he could stay with her and she would get better. Then she would go and ruin it. She would let something slip about flowers or parents and call him “big sister”. As much as he was willing to die for her living with her was another thing. 

He imagines himself using the shovel to cut his own head off and die right there in the dirt with his sister. That, or he could ruin every flower on the hill before wreaking havoc on everything and everyone. He could go about killing his thousand evil souls and be mortal again, for however long that might last.

He does none of that, he takes the shovel with him and walks back to the place he's been staying. Yaobikuni sees him walk into the back room and for one of the first time's he's seen her she doesn't smile. He drops the shovel and looks around the small room that's been his life for the past few years. It's full of Machi's things, scraps of fabric, paper dolls, fairy tale books, and flowers. All that's his is piled up in one corner, strangely orderly when compared to Machi. It's just a few of his weapons he'd just had sharpened, his savings, and a spare yukata.

He takes the weapons, wraps them in his spare clothing, pockets the money, and walks away. Yaobikuni's eyes land on him again and she dawns her knowing smile. "I see you're finally going to kill those 1000 men. It seems that the path of the blade is the only one you can follow." He flips her off as he leaves, a simple act with no real emotion behind it. She watches him leave without looking back. 

\---

Asano Rin doesn’t start going by Rin until long after her family is dead. For the longest time, she is Asano Sakai the dutiful son. A son who trains in the ways her father taught her but they are never enough. Her hands shake after too long and she thinks of how he was always with her mother. 

She had watched those careful hands sow and cook from a young age. The trick of how those seemingly delicate fingers would stay sturdy when even her father began to falter. She had believed her father to be the most powerful man in the world and still her mother seemed to rival him some days. She had always wished to be like her, sturdy and gentle. 

The idea of loving one of her parents more than the other sends her to her knees in the training grounds vomiting up her meager lunch. She wipes away the bile with the back of her sleeve as she breaths heavily into the dirt. Her training sword lays on the ground right in front of her. She reaches out a hand to it but draws it back almost instantly. 

If she wants to get stronger she has to pick up that sword and keep training until she can’t anymore. That’s what she would do if she was stronger, like the son she was supposed to be. But she’s tired of fighting so she pulls herself up and wanders back inside the dojo. She still avoids the main room as best she can but she can’t bring herself to sell the house. 

She considers the kitchen for a moment but she knows its bare, the last of the food used up for her last meal. She wanders to her parent’s room instead of her own, seeking comfort even if they aren’t there. She strips off her yukata before soiling her parent’s bed with sweat, dirt, and bile. Tears prick at her eyes as she collapses on the bed and curls up on herself. It’s a cowardly thing to do, she needs to stop crying, to stop missing them from being the only thing on her mind. She takes a quick inhale through the nose and imagines she can still smell their scent there. 

So she does something she’s trained herself to, she finds a goal and steadies herself around it. She looks at her mother’s closet and draws herself up on shaking legs. She takes a step forward and almost trips over her abandoned yukata. Still, she doesn’t look away from the partly open door. 

She pushes it open with a single hand almost impressed by how easy it is. It should be harder to do what she’s about to do, to desecrate, but the bright colored cloth is so tempting. She drags her fingers gently over the fabrics and they flutter in response. The fabrics are far more fine than that her own clothing but she chalks the softness up to lack of use. Her fingers stop on red fabric patterned into flame. 

She takes it from the closet and gently as she can, breathing shallow as if she could break it so easily. She lays it down on the bed and stares at it. It’s just as beautiful as it had been in the closet, a dark red color with white lines that create an illusion. It is almost as if she is not looking at white lines but the few sections of space the fire has left to breath before it devours all of the fabric. 

She’d seen her mother wear it once or twice but those memories are from when she was far younger and it shows. This would be too small on her mother now, but Rin knows that she’ll fit in just fine. She is not Rin then, she is still a son who is daring to dress in his dead mother’s clothing. 

It should feel like desecrating a grave, digging up her mother’s corpse to spit on it. It should leave her in the dirt again gagging on bile, but it sets her skin afire with anticipation. Once she ties it around her waist she turns to the only mirror in the house and looks at herself. 

She does not look like Sakai, the cowardly but dutiful heir to a sword school. The fabric hangs over her wrong, there is too much space for chest and hips that are not there while everything else is too thick. Still, she feels better than she has in days. The feeling of happiness leaves her breathless, something like hope blooms in her chest. She hasn’t felt anything close to this for the past year. 

Asano Rin does not exist yet, the name will come to her much later when she is finally ready to leave and find her vengeance. She does not yet know that she is a young woman, much less and Kenshi. She has her father’s shoulders but her mother’s spirit. 

She stares at herself and for the first time in years, the memory of her mother seems like something she can live with. She has something beyond an empty house and a vengeful heart. It does not last, the guilt of trying to forget leaves her exhausted and raw but she does not take off the kimono. Her eyes focus on the flame pattern and she imagines burning up with it, leaving as smokey white tendrils in the sky. It would be so easy to return it to the closet and never think of this day again, but she can't bring herself to. 

She braids her hair as best she can and walks away from the mirror to pick up her abandoned Yukata. After depositing it with the rest of her laundry she returns to the training ground and picks up the practice blade. She imagines the tip of her blade catching fire and burning Anotsu instead. She will kill him her in mother's clothes and with her father's blade. 

That night, after collapsing on her bed, she dreams of fire instead of blood. She sees Anatsu's skin char and melt as the daughter of Takayoshi and Toki Asano takes her revenge.


End file.
